Vietnam food processing industry: Plenty room for development investment

The seminar aimed to introduce potentials and prospects of the food processing industry as a reliable investment destination for foreign investors, contributing to create favorable conditions for Vietnamese localities, industrial parks and companies to attract foreign investors to invest in the food processing industry.

In recent years, many domestic companies and foreign invested companies in Vietnam have focused more on improving production and trading capacity, however, investment in the food processing industry is still limited, though this sector is considered to have prospects for strong growth.

Mr. Dang Xuan Quang, Deputy Director of Foreign Investment Agency (MPI) said that, to date, Vietnam had attracted nearly USD 290 billion and disbursed nearly USD 160 billion foreign investment capital, however, only USD 7.6 billion of foreign capital were attracted in the field of food processing industry with 521 projects. Most of foreign investment activities were less bound to food material areas, and were not interested in developing material areas. Furthermore, although raw materials in the country were very rich, but had not met the production demands of FDI companies.

Besides, according to Mr. Quang, Vietnam did not have incentives for this sector which were scattered in various regulations, in agricultural, rural and credit policies, depending on specific geographical areas. ..

To promote investment in food processing industry, according to experts, local authorities should actively plan raw agricultural material areas for investors which were associated with the transfer of land use rights from farmers to investors on the basis of agreements between investors and companies under the provisions of the land Law by renting or contributing using land capital for agricultural business. At the same time, local manufacturing units and companies need to apply advanced technologies in the agriculture and fisheries to improve product quality.

According to Mr. Claudio Dordi, expert of EU- Mutrap project, to improve the quality of agricultural food products for export, Vietnam should support investment companies to invest in brand. In fact, there were many countries consuming Vietnamese agricultural products but did not know which products originated from Vietnam.

Speaking at the seminar, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Ho Thi Kim Thoa stressed: "In the future foreign investors should not miss the opportunity to exploit investment opportunities in the field of food industry in Vietnam. At the same time, businesses, organizations and localities of Vietnam who have the demand to attract foreign investment should actively attract foreign investors to invest and cooperate in business".

Assessing the attractiveness of inv